SALT LAKE CITY – For 11 days Sy Snarr laid in a hospital bed wondering why she was alive.
“I had a fall,” she said of a 2008 accident, “and I had 11 broken bones, and I had a punctured lung, and I had a concussion. I had a broken back. I had six broken ribs.”
But as her battered and broken body healed, she wrestled with a question.
“I always wondered, why did I survive this fall?” she recalled. “Because a lady that same day had fallen at her home, and not as far as I fell, and she died. And I always thought, why did I live?”
Sy found herself telling that story – and repeating that question – 12 years later to the family of the man who murdered her son. And it was then, in the same room where she learned the night of Aug. 28, 1996 that her son Zach had been shot to death – and his friend, Yvette Rodier, left for dead – that the shooter’s older brother offered an answer she could never have considered.
“I don’t know why I was even telling (him) about this (fall),” she said. “And I said, ‘I’ve always wondered, why in the world did I live?’ And his brother just looked at me and said, ‘Sy.’ And I looked at him, and he put his hand on his mom’s knee and just kind of patted it. And he said, ‘This is why, this is why you survived.’”
Sy looked at the elderly mother of Jorge Benvenuto, who suffered so much hatred and harassment in the wake of her son’s crimes that she had to leave the state of Utah. She considered the unlikely developing friendship between the Snarrs and the Benvenutos, and how it all began with a letter Jorge wrote to the Snarrs in 2018.
No one is more surprised than Sy Snarr at how her feelings for Jorge – and his family – have changed since she accepted his apology and extended forgiveness, and eventually friendship, to him and his family.
“I think just seeing the difference it’s made in their lives,” Sy said of how forgiveness has continued to evolve in their lives, “and the difference it’s made in our lives…it is just so freeing. If you had told me 28 years ago, I could ever feel like this, that I would be this happy again or love someone that I once hated with every ounce of my being, I would never have believed it. But all I can say is, it has been so good for us as a family. I know it’s been good for his family.”
But even as she treasured this new sense of peace, these precious new relationships, Sy felt like she had a responsibility to do something more.
“I want to give Jorge another chance,” she said.
She began asking for help.
She wrote to a U.S. senator, attorneys, even Utah’s governor. Because he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for killing Zachary Snarr, the only hope to change his sentence was convincing Utah’s Board of Pardons and Parole to hold a commutation hearing.
She wrote, but was just beginning to feel that she’d never even get a rejection when – in February, she got a letter from the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.
She ripped it open and read it.
They’d scheduled a hearing for March 4, 2025.
“I thought this is really going to happen,” Sy said. “I thought they were either going to say, No, this is not going to but when I opened it and they said there was going to be this hearing, I was …excited, in a way, and yet the reality hit me. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it is going to matter what I say. And I don’t know how to put into words how I feel.”
But the hearing she’d asked for, wasn’t the hearing they state gave her. Instead of a commutation hearing, the board scheduled a victim’s hearing. And instead of considering a change to his sentence, the Board said the hearing was to give the victims – the Snarrs and Yvette Rodier – the chance to put their feelings on the record.
Sy understood the purpose, and yet, she still felt like maybe, if she found the right combination of words, the Board might decide to give Jorge Benvenuto, now 47, a hearing to consider whether he really does deserve a second chance.
“I feel so much anxiety and pressure,” she said. “I know this is my one chance to do …what in my heart I know I need to do, and what I want to do. I want them to know that this is really important to me, and this is important. The whole issue is so important. And I just want them to hear me. I want them to hear what’s in my heart. I know that there’s going to be opposition. I know that. And like I said, I’m not judging. I think Yvette has every right to deal with this how she wants. You know, I’m not the one that was shot, but I am the one who lost a son. He’s the one that’s dead. He’s not here anymore. I’m speaking for us. I’m speaking for him.”
Yvette was opposed – not just to the board considering a commutation hearing, but to even holding a hearing. She decided not to attend, instead asking her husband, Dave Whitby, to read a letter she wrote.
“I’ve never seen anything weigh on her,” Dave said before the hearing. “She’s pretty resilient. But this has been weighing on her.”
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In this special episode – The Hearing – we keep a promise we made two years ago. That we’d update you if there was any news in Jorge’s case. In this episode, we bring you coverage of this long-awaited hearing, but also look at the context surrounding it and it’s impact. This hearing is the first time Dave will see the man who affects his life in so many ways, and it’s the first time anyone will hear publicly from Jorge Benvenuto.
But if parole isn’t an option, what’s the value in holding this hearing? Does it matter how anyone feels if the sentence is impossible to change? And finally, what’s next – for Jorge, for the Snarrs and for Yvette and her family?